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As Munenori Kawasaki inspected the Blue Jays’ lineup card on Tuesday afternoon, even he had to chuckle.

“Oh!” he said, raising his eyebrows and smiling before returning to his locker.

The skinny, slap-hitting infielder was slotted into the fifth spot in the batting order — typically the domain of beefier batsmen — as the Jays favoured a rookie-laden lineup in their mostly meaningless game against the wild-card-chasing Seattle Mariners.

With Seattle sending the American League’s leading Cy Young candidate, Felix Hernandez, to the mound, the game looked destined to be a lopsided affair in the Mariners’ favour. “King Felix,” who had allowed just three runs this month, would surely make mince meat of the Jays’ decidedly non-threatening lineup.

But as is so often the case inside a single baseball game, few could have predicted what followed.

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Mississauga’s Dalton Pompey, making just his fifth major-league start, led off the fifth inning with his first career home run — a game-tying solo shot slammed into the second deck in right field. The 21-year-old, who grew up just a half hour from the Rogers Centre, said he knew the ball was gone as soon as he hit it, but was still in “shock” as it was happening.

Polls

“Because of who was pitching and the ball I hit,” he explained. “I’ve played with that guy on video games; to hit a home run off him is pretty crazy.”

Pompey shared the moment with his mother, father and brother Tristan, who were among the 16,272 in attendance Tuesday night.

“My parents didn’t know who he was, but my brother did,” Pompey said. “He was like, ‘Oh, you just hit a homer off King Felix!’ ”

From there, the floodgates inexplicably opened and a Jays lineup that featured Kawasaki, Pompey and Anthony Gose as its 5-6-7 hitters combined to score seven runs off the 2010 Cy Young winner in a bat-around fifth inning — the most runs Hernandez had ever allowed in a single inning — as the game slipped away from the Venezuelan right-hander — and with it much of the Mariners’ playoff hopes.

The Jays went on to pound Seattle 10-2, scoring double-digit runs for the second game in a row. Despite the victory, Toronto was officially eliminated from playoff contention Tuesday night as the Kansas City Royals beat Cleveland to strengthen their hold on the second wild-card spot. The Jays, meanwhile, may have delivered a fatal blow to the Mariners, who have lost four straight and now trail Kansas City by three games with just five to play.

For the Jays, the last two games have been a nice respite from an otherwise disappointing season.

But the club is playing only for pride at this point, and the nominal satisfaction of finishing the year with a winning record for just the fifth time this decade. This club, which spent 48 days in first place back in May and early June — offering fans the tantalizing hope of ending the franchise’s 21-year-old playoff drought — has been maddeningly inconsistent and unpredictable, swinging from one extreme to another. The futility of their 1-6 road trip, which preceded the offensive explosion of the last two nights, is a perfect illustration.

“We’re such a streaky team,” said R.A. Dickey — a previous Cy Young winner in his own right — who allowed just a pair of runs over seven solid innings on Tuesday. “If we can just somehow arrest those times when we find ourselves on those negative streaks, I think we would be right in it if not leading the wild card right now.”

Dickey said the team was hurt by injuries this year, and he also noted that maybe there was a letdown when the front office failed to make any significant additions at the trade deadline.

“But you can’t pout about that stuff. I feel like we’ve got a good contingency of players in here that know each other well enough and are dedicated to a collective goal of winning a pennant,” he said. “That’s the hope. But of course we’re some pieces away, or we would have done it.”

NORRIS TO MAKE FIRST START

Rookie left-hander Daniel Norris will make his first major-league start on Thursday in the series finale against the Mariners in place of the suspended Marcus Stroman, manager John Gibbons announced Tuesday.

Norris, who started the season in Class-A Dunedin and rose three levels of the Jays’ farm system before earning a September call-up, last started a game on Aug. 26 for Triple-A Buffalo, so the Jays are only expecting the 21-year-old to throw two or three innings.

The bullpen will piece together the rest of the game. Following Norris, the Jays’ rotation for the final three games of the season against the Baltimore Orioles will be Drew Hutchison, J.A. Happ and Dickey, with Stroman pitching out of the bullpen.

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